Dig Dug
Cat, Mike and Joyce watched over Will's shoulder as he drew the location of Hopper, the former anxiously biting her nails. Joyce leaned down closer to her son. "Hey, is this where you saw him?" She stuttered. "Is this where you saw Hopper?"
"I think so. Yeah." Will answered.
"Okay." Joyce said softly as she picked up the drawing. Her eyes scanned over the walls, trying to work out what part of the map it fit into.
Joyce, Cat and Mike walked through the house, desperately searching for where the new drawing could fit into, until the Wheeler boy called out, "Here!"
Joyce and Catherine both ran over to where Mike stood in the kitchen, the former sticking the paper to the wall.
"Okay, so... so Hopper is here?" the older woman asked.
"Apparently." Cat nodded, crouching down next to her.
"Yeah." Mike confirmed. "Now we just need to find out where he is, right?"
Cat nodded. "Yup. And it sounds like we need to work fast because otherwise we'll be too late. So, um, no pressure?"
"Did he say anything?" Mike asked Joyce. "I mean, before he left?"
Joyce sighed. "Uh, some... something about vines? And to keep an eye on Catherine."
The girl in question raised an eyebrow, silently asking 'why me?'. But before she could get an answer from anybody the sound of a car approaching caught their attention and the three of them raced to the window.
"Hopper." Joyce said, voicing her hope aloud.
Cat looked out of the window to see a red car and Joyce's boyfriend Bob climb out of the car. "I don't think that's Hopper." Joyce opened the door, stepping outside before closing the door behind- not wanting to get Bob involved in their situation. Cat leaned on the door, listening to the conversation between the two adults.
"What the hell are you doing?" Mike asked her, whispering so as to not be heard by the adults.
"What do you think I'm doing? I'm eavesdropping, duh." She pushed her ear closer to the door, hearing the conversation between Joyce and Bob.
"Surprise." Bob said as he walked up to the house, a pile of games in his hands. "I would've called, but you said not to clog up the line."
"You know, I... We're fine, we don't need anything." Cat heard Joyce tell him, politely trying to get him to leave so she and the kids could help save the Chief of police. Cat grabbed Mike's arm and pulled him over to the door, getting him to join in with the eavesdropping.
"When I was sick as a kid, and I was sick all the time as a kid, nothing made me feel better than focusing on these brain teaser." He held the pile of games up to show Joyce.
"Those are great. Ah..."
"I could teach him how to play."
"You know, he's sleeping." Joyce lied him as thunder began to rumble in the distance.
"Okay. I could wait with you?" Bob suggested.
Joyce let out a sigh. "Listen, it's just not a good time. But, um, you know what? I'll call you, okay?" She planted a quick kiss on his cheek. "Thank you."
"You sure?"
"Yeah." Joyce nodded as Bob started to walk back to his car.
"Well, have him call me. They don't call me Bob the Brain for nothing."
Joyce let out a chuckle and began walking back towards the door. Mike, who was looking through the window, pulled Cat away from the door so they wouldn't get caught listening in on the adult's conversation. Joyce gasped, spinning back around. "Bob!" She called.
Bob paused at his car, turning to her. He held his arms out to the sides. "That's my name."
***
Joyce had brought Bob inside the house, in hopes that he could help them work out the location of Jim Hopper. The group stood in one corner of the living room, looking up at the drawings that were stuck up everywhere. "Huh." Bob simply let out. "Hmm." He turned to Will. "You drew all these yourself?"
"Mmm-hmm." Joyce hummed out as an answer as Will nodded.
"Why, exactly?" Bob asked.
"I... I told you the rules." Joyce told her boyfriend. "No questions, okay?" They knew it would take too long to explain everything- something they didn't have the time for right now- and so the best way to get through this was with a 'no questions' rule. It was for the best.
"Yeah." Bob agreed.
"We... we just need you to help us figure out what..." Joyce walked away towards the specific part of the map where Hopper was. She turned around, realising that he wasn't following her. "Bob? Bob? Over here." She waved him over to her. Bob handed the games to Mike before following Joyce into the kitchen.
Joyce crouched down, drawing a red 'X' over the part of the map where Hopper was supposedly trapped. "Where... where this is." She explained.
"That's the objective." Mike told him as Cat nodded. "Find the X." They said in unison.
"Yeah? What's at the X? Pirate treasure?" Bob chuckled, looking at the drawing.
Cat, although finding the comment amusing, couldn't help but roll her eyes. They were on a time limit. They had to find Hopper. And they needed to find him alive.
"Bob, no questions."
"Okay." His eyes followed the trail of drawings before he turned to Joyce and led her out of the room. "Let me talk to you for a second." He turned to the younger members of the group, "Hang on, guys."
Cat sighed, taking a seat on one of the dining chairs. Tiredly, she rested her head on the table before turning to Will. "Why did Hopper ask your mom to keep an eye on me? Like, why me specifically?"
Will shrugged, unsure how to answer the teen. "Because... Because I think whatever it is, it's going after you..."
Catherine sat up in her seat and ran a hand threw her very messy hair. "Why me? Why is this thing going after me?"
Will shrugged again. "I don't know. I'm sorry, Cat."
Cat stood from her seat and walked over to the boy, pulling him into a hug. "It's okay. It's not your fault. We can defeat it. We're going to put a stop to all this." Will nodded, wrapping his arms tightly around the teen. The two pulled away when they heard Bob's voice out in the hallway.
"Okay, I get it. That's Lake Jordan." He continued walking through the house, working out the map. Will, Mike and Catherine joined Joyce in following him, unsure of what was going through the man's mind. "And if that's Lake Jordan, then you can probably find..." He clicked his fingers together a couple of times. "Yeah, that's, uh, Sattler's quarry." He walked into the living room. "And if you just follow it naturally... it moves to... the Eno River." He came to a stop in the corner of the living room where the group where all standing earlier. "And there it is." He pointed at a specific part of the drawings. "That's the Eno, do you see it?"
Joyce tilted her head slightly in confusion. "Okay, so the lines aren't roads." Bob told her as he continued to walk around the room. "But they act like roads." He made his way back into the kitchen. "And they act like roads 'cause when you follow 'em, you'll see... they don't go over water. And that's the giveaway. That's the giveaway. Ha!" Bob told them, excited about having finally worked it out. "Don't you get it? It's not a puzzle, it's a map."
Cat's eyes widened in realisation. "It's a map of Hawkins."
Bob let out a laugh, pointing at Cat as if telling her she was correct. "Right, Will?" He asked to double check if he'd worked it out properly.
Will just sat there, not knowing what to say.
***
"Guys, this is Dustin again." Dustin spoke into the microphone attached to his headset as he shovelled dirt over his family's dead cat. "Does anyone copy? This is a code red. I repeat, a code red!"
He spoke into his headset again as he grabbed cleaning products from one of the cupboards in the kitchen. "I really need someone to pick up here." He pulled on a pair of red rubber gloves. "Hopper's MIA, and I've got a code red. Code red!"
"All right, it's Dustin again." He tried one more time as he began trying to clean the blood from his carpet. "Seriously, I have a code red."
"Could you please shut up?" The voice of Erica Sinclair came through Dustin's headset.
"Erica?" Dustin asked, pausing his cleaning. "Erica, is Lucas there? Where is he?"
"Don't know. Don't care." She told him simply.
"Is he with Mike?" Dustin stuttered.
"Like I said, I don't know and I don't care."
"Please tell him it's super important. Please tell him that I have a code-"
"Code red?" Erica asked.
"Yep, code red." Dustin nodded, even though Erica couldn't see him. "Exactly."
"Mmm-hmm. I got a code for you instead. It's called code shut-your-mouth." She turned off Lucas' walkie-talkie and static invaded Dustin's ears.
"Erica?" Dustin stuttered out, slightly confused.
***
Cat watched as Bob laid out a map of Hawkins out on the dining room table. "All right." He muttered as he placed a ruler over the paper so he could measure the distance between each lake. He pulled out a pen from his coat pocket and began writing things down, calling out to Mike and Joyce as he did so. The two had a tape measure and were measuring the distances between the lakes on the map that Will had drawn.
"All right. I'm 3.6 inches, what do you got?"
"I'm not sure." Mike called from where he was stood at the lake they had labelled 'Lovers Lake'. "Mrs. Byers?"
"Hold on." She called as she dragged the tape down the hall and into the living room, stopping at the point they had labelled 'Tippecanoe'. "Twenty-one feet, four inches." She called out to Bob.
"What about Tippecanoe to Danford creek?" Bob asked.
Joyce sighed as she stammered out, "Danford? Where's Danford?"
"Dining room." Will told her.
Cat, deciding to be helpful, ran across the room to where Danford Creek was labelled. She sighed. "Sixteen feet, ten inches."
"What about Danford to Jordan?" Bob asked.
"Oh, come on. This has gotta be enough." Joyce stuttered, walking over to where Bob sat at the table, Will right behind her.
"It's not. It's... it's really not." Bob told her as he made markings on the map.
"Okay. Can't you figure it out?" Joyce asked him. They were all crowded around the table, watching Bob write stuff down on the map.
"Well, it's hard." Bob stuttered. "The ratio isn't exactly one-to-one. I mean, if you're twisting my arm, and you are twisting my arm, I would say that the X is..." They all leaned in closely as he drew another line on the map. "...maybe a half mile southeast of Danford?"
Joyce let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you." She kissed him on the cheek and grabbed the map from the table. "Thank you." She raced out of the room and both kids and the small teen raced after her, leaving a very confused Bob in the kitchen.
"What? Are we... we really going?" He asked, although everyone had left the room. He hurriedly followed after them, not wanting to be left behind.
***
Dustin cycled down the driveway to the Wheeler's household, hopping off his bike and frantically ringing the doorbell until Ted Wheeler eventually opened the door. "Your line has been busy for over two hours, Mr. Wheeler." Dustin told him, annoyed. "Do you realise this?"
"Oh, I do realise."
"Is Mike home?" Dustin inquired, hoping that his friend was.
"No." Ted Wheeler told him simply.
"No? Well, where the hell is he?"
"Karen," Mr. Wheeler called to his wife who was currently on the phone. "Where's our son?"
"Will's!" She called back to him, obviously sounding irritated.
"Will's." Ted reiterated to Dustin.
Dustin sighed. "No one's picking up there. Nancy. What about Nancy?"
"Karen," Ted called back into the house again, "where's Nancy?"
Karen Wheeler let out an irritated sigh. "Ally's!"
"Ally's." Mr. Wheeler told Dustin. "Our children don't live here anymore. You didn't know that?"
"Seriously?"
"Am I done here?" Ted asked.
"Son of a bitch. You're really no help at all, you know that?" Dustin told the man before walking away from the house.
"Hey!" Ted called after him. "Language."
Dustin walked back up the path, picking his bike off the ground when a familiar burgundy BMW pulled up in front of the house. Steve Harrington stepped out the car, a bunch of red roses in his hands as he muttered to himself. "Listen... I've been thinking... maybe we should just stay friends. I'm sorry." He scoffed to himself as we walked over the Wheeler's front lawn. "I'm sorry? What the hell am I sorry for?"
"Steve." Dustin called out to him as he walked across the lawn to the older teen. "Are those for Mr. or Mrs. Wheeler?" He asked, pointing at the flowers.
Steve glanced to the flowers in his hands before looking back at Dustin. "No."
"Good." Dustin grabbed the flowers and walked to Steve's car, opening the passenger door.
"Hey." Steve called after him. "What the hell? Hey!"
"Nancy isn't home." Dustin informed him.
"Where is she?"
"Doesn't matter. We have bigger problems than your love life. Do you still have that bat?"
"Bat? What bat?" Steve asked the curly-haired boy, obviously confused.
"The one with the nails? The one you apparently used to save my sister from a Demogorgon last year." He waved the flowers around in the air as if it were obvious.
"Why?" Steve asked, still standing on the front lawn of the Wheeler's house.
"I'll explain it on the way." Dustin told him, climbing into the passenger seat.
"Now?" Steve asked him.
"Now!"
Steve ran to his car and hopped in the drivers seat, starting the drive to the Henderson household.
"Speaking of my sister," Dustin looked to the back seat of the BMW, not seeing her there. "Where is she?"
"How should I know?" Steve responded. "I was meant to drop her off yesterday after school but she got dragged away by one of your friends."
"Lucas?" Dustin asked, unsure which one of his friends the teen was talking about.
Steve shook his head. "No?"
"So, Mike then?"
"Uh, yeah. I think."
"Okay, well it must have been Mike because was going to check on Will and he was going to get her to go with him." Dustin told him. "And also, wouldn't Kit have told you where she was going?" Steve nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. "Do you just not listen to her or something?"
Steve stayed quiet, not sure how to go about answering. It wasn't that he just didn't pay attention when Catherine Henderson was speaking, it was because he was too busy admiring her. He realised that he could spend hours staring at her, listening to her talk about literally anything. She was just so... amazing. At first, back when him and Nancy were still officially a thing, he believed it was because of how close friends they had grown to be again. But now he wasn't officially going out with Nancy Wheeler, a new view had opened up to him and he realised... he had a crush on his best friend. He, Steve Harrington, had a crush on Catherine Henderson.
And now he was being dragged on some weird adventure with her younger brother.
***
"There's nothing." Mike said as he looked out the window of Joyce's car, not seeing anything except for fields and the darkness of the sky settling in.
"Exactly." Cat agreed. "There's nothing here."
"Are... Are we close?" Joyce asked Bob who was sat in the passenger seat with the map.
"We're in the vicinity."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Cat asked, leaning forward in her seat.
"It means we're close. I don't know. It's not precise." Bob replied.
"But we did all that work." Joyce said.
"I told you, the scale ratio s not exactly one-to-one. We needed to take-"
"Turn right." Will said suddenly, cutting the argument between the adults short.
"What?" Joyce asked her son, taking her eyes off the road to look at him.
"I saw him."
"You what?" Cat asked as Joyce asked him, "Where?" She looked back to the road, trying to spot Hopper through the darkness.
"Not here, In my now-memories." Will explained.
"In your what?" Bob asked, turning around to the boy. He was completely and utterly confused.
"Turn right!"
The tires screeched as Joyce turned the car sharply- crashing into a sign for the pumpkin patch. Everyone let out a yell as the car kept rolling forwards, only coming to a stop when they were right behind Hopper's van. Cat jumped out of the car, running towards the van, only to see it parked in front of a very large hole covered in vines. "Oh my, God. What the actual fuck?"
"What's Jim doing here? Joyce?" Bob asked, still confused.
"Boys, I need you to stay here." Joyce told them as she climbed out of the car. "I'm gonna get Catherine to stay with you."
"No." Will protested. "Mom, Mom, Mom, it's not safe."
"That's why I need you to stay here! Stay here!" She rushed over to where Cat was stood, looking down at the vines in horror. "Catherine." She pulled the teen away from the van. "I need you to stay with the boys keep them safe."
"Of- of course." Cat pulled Joyce in for a quick but meaningful hug before sending both her and Bob a salute and walking back towards the boys in the car. She climbed into the passenger seat as Joyce called out for Hopper. "Well, looks like I'm in charge." She sat facing the two boys, her legs crossed as she leaned her head on the dashboard. Her eyes fluttered shut. She was completely exhausted. If she was being honest, she hadn't slept properly the night before- not that she had in a while. Not since last year, anyway. As she began to think about it, the only time she ever got a decent nights sleep was when she was staying over at Steve's or when he stayed at hers. She hated how cliché that sounded, but it was true. Steve Harrington was the only one who could make her nightmares go away, and he didn't know it.
Will and Mike climbed out of the car and walked towards the edge of the hole. They left Cat in the car, not wanting to disturb her. They both knew she had barely slept recently. It was obvious. There were heavy bags under her eyes and the way she acted in general- easily irritated and annoyed, snapping at anyone who spoke to her at the wrong time- it was clear she was sleep deprived.
"Do you see anything?" Mike asked. "I mean, in your now-memories?" Will shook his head, no. Tires screeching caught their attention, and Cat's. The boys turned around to see the vans from Hawkins' Lab come driving up to them as Cat stumbled out of the car, walking towards the two.
"What the fuck is happening? I thought you two were meant to stay in the car!" She watched on confused as soldiers exited the vans and surrounded the area. People in hazmat suits going down the hole with what looked like dangerous weapons.
Her attention quickly turned back to Will as he fell to the ground in pain. She placed a hand on her head as it began to throb. She ignored it, finding Will way more important as she crouched down next to him, completely worried for the boy.
"Will?" Mike asked, also kneeling next to the boy.
"Will, are you okay?" Cat asked him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Cat, what's going on?" Mike asked her worriedly.
Cat shook her head silently. "I- I don't know, Mike. I don't know."
Will rolled onto his back and began screaming.
"Oh my, God!" Catherine cried as Mike took a step back.
The pain in her head was increasing as she stood up from the grass. She grabbed Mike's hand, hoping that it would provide some sort of comfort to the boy. The more Will screamed, the more the pain in her head increased- until she felt her eyes fall shut and her body go completely limp. She stumbled backwards, her hand letting go of Mike's before she crashed to the ground. Her eyes had closed and she could barely hear the people around her. But she couldn't move.
She slowly fell unconscious, her last thought being if they had successfully rescued Hopper or not. She desperately hoped that they had.
***
A/N:
And I oop-
I'm literally so sorry y'all. This chapter was weird, like proper weird. Oops.
(Edited: 21/4/2020)
(Edit 2: 10/9/2021)